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All Quotes by author - Irwin Shaw

" A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much. "

" All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one. "

" An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself. "

" At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded. "

" A writer has to live with a sense of honor. "

" A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor. "

" Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all. "

" Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy. "

" Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory. "

" I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself. "

" I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel? "

" I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans. "

" If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship. "

" I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various. "

" I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal. "

" I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young. "

" In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that. "

" In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody. "

" In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75. "

" I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober. "

" I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it. "

" In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices. "

" I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written. "

" Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American. "

" It's those damn critics again. "

" I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it. "

" Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House. "

" My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have. "

" My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever. "

" My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me. "

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